Valleywag
Recap
Recap
Nostalgia Trip
Top ten stops on August's memory lane
Opening tonight at the Village East in Manhattan is August, the Indiewood tale starring Josh Hartnett of an Internet startup's collapse on the eve of September 11th. The film is an homage to an era of excess gone sour, and we figured we'd sum up the references for those of you who were there to reminisce and for those of you who weren't to get an idea of what you missed. In this clip early in the film former John Hancock Tech Fund manager Marc Klee plays himself as an analyst discussing the fictional company in the film, LandShark, shortly after a gangbuster IPO. More »
Caption Contest
Cloned dog in canoe
As F. Scott Fitzgerald once quipped, "The rich are different than you and me." Case in point here is this pet cruising on Echo Lake in the Sierras, apparently one of six privately cloned in South Korea from a deceased dog named Missy. Have a better caption? The best one will become the new headline. Yesterday's winner: "Only the truly unfortunate use Comic Sans" by sample032. (Photo by Steve Jurvetson)
cleantech
Al Gore commands America to go fully green -- and pad his venture-capital returns
In a speech at Philadelphia's historic Constitution Hall, former veep and current entrepreneur-investor Al Gore called on Americans to produce 100 percent of our energy from fully renewable sources within 10 years. Impossible? Probably. But that won't stop him from playing a latter-day John F. Kennedy: More »
Politics
Cuba thumbs nose at American embargo, will run fiber-optic cables to Venezuela
It's unlikely that the average Cuban will be catching Ron Paul mania on YouTube, but there will be more cries of "Viva la revolucion!" being uploaded from official sources thanks to a fiber-optic line running across the Caribbean from Cuba to Venezuela, to be completed in 2010. And, naturally, Cuban telecommunications vice minister Boris Moreno is blaming the current lack of access on Fortress America: More »
Online Video
Has Avril Lavigne made $2 million from YouTube? Highly unlikely
The "Girlfriend" video from tweenybopper pop diva Avril Lavigne has taken the all-time views title away from Judson Laipply's Evolution of Dance, though it's still stuck in the second spot on YouTube's leaderboard. Besides being manually kept out of the top spot, what have all those views garnered the young guitarista? According to her label's CEO Terry McBride of Nettwerk Management, $2 million in revenue-sharing income from YouTube. But a longtime reader who's represented other popular YouTube partners with eight-figure view counts called shenanigans: More »
Venture Capital
No, Kleiner Perkins won't give your Web 2.0 startup money
In the latest issue of Fortune, a feature about venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins pointed out that the company has yet to make any investments in Web 2.0. The firm which was an early investor in Google has not been so bullish on the likes of Facebook. (The investment in Friendster couldn't have helped.) Instead, it has continued to focus on biotech on the one hand and changed focus to cleantech on the other. Reporter Adam Lashinsky noted that KP didn't even send a representative to the Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference this year, and relays the bad buzz from Carlsbad: More »
Caption Contest
Only the truly unfortunate use Comic Sans
A community activist at the Yahoo Employee Foundation picnic spins a "Wheel of Misfortune" which asks questions like "Who are the poorest people in Sunnyvale? How many people need food stamps? What percentage of Sunnyvale residents are low in income?" I'm guessing the answer isn't "Yahoo shareholders." Have a better caption? The best one will become the new headline. Yesterday's winner: "It's my pleasure to announce the king and queen of the Valleywag Prom... Jimmy Wales and Julia Allison!" by WagCurious.(Photo from Yodel Anecdotal)
Online Video
Vogue's new reality show hopes to bedazzle the Internet
Every print publisher, and especially the glossies, want in on the online-video game. Unlike the text-and-photos Web, where there are more pageviews than media buyers know what to do with, there's not enough slickly packaged content that big brands deem safe enough to advertise themselves on. Condé Nast's Vogue has a new reality show for the Web, Model.Live, which "tracks three models as they navigate casting calls, catwalks and airports for fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris." It debuts August 19. What you won't see? Drinking and smoking. What you will see? Eating disorders confronted "head-on." That's because this an attempt to reach out to a younger demographic on behalf of the sponsor, aspirational mall brand Express — which sells American women the sequined, screen-printed jeans they love. What's all this going to cost Express? More »
Acquisitions
PodTech sells for $500,000, which will hopefully cover its debts
PodTech, the online video startup left to reliving better days when charming shill Robert Scoble was a frontman for the company, has found a buyer, ViewPartner, and for the paltry sum of $500,000. Hopefully the company's creditors will be getting more than a few pennies back on their dollars — the company has been at the mercy of their bankers, and one commenter says that they were racking up tabs with vendors. VCs like US Ventures and Venrock probably won't be getting any of the more than $5.5 million invested in the company, however. Founder and chairman John Furrier must be relieved, as he was all smiles at recent reunion of DEMO conference attendees.(Photo by Brian Solis, bub.blicio.us)
Movies
"August" lets you relive kooshes, quintuple-shot lattes and IPOs
"That was probably the most accurate part, seeing Fucked Company at your company while you still worked there," Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams joked at a panel after a screening of the film August. Director Austin Chick assured "that was in the script from the beginning." "It's kinda like Fucked Company," Fucked Company creator (and AdBrite founder) Phillip "Pud" Kaplan shouted from the audience moments later. The latest Josh Hartnett vehicle, produced in part by Josh Hartnett, August attempts to portray tragedy while simultaneously reifying the "Internet rockstar" archetype. But it's dated from the start by Aronofsky-esque visuals and a Fischerspooner soundtrack as Hartnett's character Tom, CEO of Landshark, hears in passing of Internet-video startup Pseudo.com laying off dozens as his own public company is exploding around him. More »
Mourning Becomes Electric
Heath Ledger's iPod and the microchip memorial
Aaron Eckhart and Maggie Gyllenhaal dropped by the Today Show this morning to shill a movie, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Eckhart earnestly related to host Matt Lauer a story about their deceased costar Heath Ledger which he'd told Ledger's mother — namely, that friends were passing around Ledger's iPod as a form of remembrance: More »
YouTube blowing away competition as distribution platform
TubeMogul, a startup which allows content creators to post video clips to multiple sites at once and track aggregate views for the clip across sites, did a survey of over 200,000 clips and how much traffic they garnered after 90 days. The results? The average clip got more views on YouTube in three months (3,092) than on the next eight video sites combined (2,092). [NewTeeVee]
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Caption Contest
"It's my pleasure to announce the king and queen of the Valleywag Prom... Jimmy Wales and Julia Allison!"
Mashable was in town to do what they do best — throw parties. For CEO Pete Cashmore's sake, let's hope the faux blogger is doing a Morrissey impersonation and not Ian Curtis. Have a better caption? The best one will become the new headline. Friday's winner: "They put #$*&@! Sanger back in my bio, again!? " by mrfomoco.(Photo by Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us)
Lawsuits
Apple's legal bell tolls for thee, PsyStar
PsyStar, a Miami company, garnered quite a bit of press when they announced a cheap Intel-based desktop computer that you could use as an Apple clone running Mac OS X, in a pretty clear violation of Apple's legal restrictions on use of the operating system. So everyone was waiting for the hammer to drop — which it finally did yesterday, in the form of a complaint filed by Apple with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. More »
copyfight
Mahalo Daily, the promotional show from manually manicured search-results provider Mahalo, is no longer available on YouTube. Not just a few clips have been taken down, but the whole account has been suspended. Why? A series of DMCA takedown notices from Google nemesis Viacom, naturally. I spoke to Mahalo Daily producer Tyler Crowley, who explained that he received a number of violation notices in quick succession, triggering YouTube's "three strikes, you're out" account suspension policy — even though Mahalo Daily is part of the YouTube partner program. What crime against intellectual property did Mahalo Daily commit?
More »
Mahalo Daily suspended from YouTube
Mahalo Daily, the promotional show from manually manicured search-results provider Mahalo, is no longer available on YouTube. Not just a few clips have been taken down, but the whole account has been suspended. Why? A series of DMCA takedown notices from Google nemesis Viacom, naturally. I spoke to Mahalo Daily producer Tyler Crowley, who explained that he received a number of violation notices in quick succession, triggering YouTube's "three strikes, you're out" account suspension policy — even though Mahalo Daily is part of the YouTube partner program. What crime against intellectual property did Mahalo Daily commit?
More »
deathwatch
Flagship Studios' bankruptcy a cautionary tale for startups
The bankruptcy of Flagship Studios, an ambitious videogames startup, provides a startling example of what not to do when it comes to finding funding for your startup. The company, founded by CEO Bill Roper, formerly of the Starcraft team at Blizzard North, leveraged the intellectual property rights for its two games, Hellgate: London and Mythos, as collateral in order to secure loans to keep the company afloat. When the company finally ran out of that money, the two core projects immediately reverted to the lenders, Comerica and HanbitSoft, respectively. HanbitSoft, a Korean company which had the exclusive rights to market the games in Asia, ended up in a position where it was in the company's interest to let Flagship go under: Why pay licensing fees when you can own the game outright after the owner goes under? More »
Online Video
Alex Albrecht and friends play World of Warcraft for fun and profit
The mysterious project Alex Albrecht, cohost of Kevin Rose's Diggnation podcast, has been working on, Project Lore? It's a show where he and some buddies play World of Warcraft together. It couldn't possibly be more geeky, reveling in WoW-speak like "trash mobs," "pulls," "ninja'd" and the like. Given Warcraft's millions of players, it will likely be as successful as it is incomprehensible to the olds. More »
Caption Contest
They put #$*&@! Sanger back in my bio, again!?
A session at Foo Camp last weekend put on by Christy Canida and Jane McGonigal was meant to teach "things like empathy, how to play a role in a larger group, confidence in social settings, and supporting them in creating meaningful relationships online and in the real world." Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales seems to have spent it text messaging — click for the full photo. Have a better caption? The best one will become the new headline. Friday's winner: "The number of good ideas I've had" by [Fake] Michael Arrington. (Photo by Jane McGonigal)
Lawsuits
More legal woes for electric-carmaker Tesla Motors
Tesla Motors can't seem to manufacture cars reliably, but the company has become something of an assembly line for lawsuits. It's being sued by a vendor for breach of contract, suing a competitor for breach of contract and theft of trade secrets, and is now being sued by a former employee who alleges the company violated California labor laws and hopes to turn the case into a class action suit. Screw ambulance chasing, Roadster chasing may be the hot new thing among local lawyers. (Photo by Tinou Bao)
Virtual Worlds
Google's prude curtain wrapped around Lively
Lively, the latest experiment from Google Labs, is yet another part of cyberspace where the Mountain View search company has decided that exploring sexuality is officially verboten. The 3D virtual world is Web-friendly, but sex-hostile. The no-sex-please-we're-Googlers policy began with Web search, where, by default, the company's SafeSearch filters which block explicit content are turned on for all users. Then came YouTube, where the company refuses to manually police for copyright infringement but employs a staff to keep women's nipples from ever appearing. And now Lively, where the community standards state: More »
Drugs
TechCrunch discovers Provigil
I have to admit, before I signed on to Valleywag, I had a few issues with the "OC-80 scare of '07." Sure, maybe jaded VCs or entrepreneurs who'd already cashed out where taking strong painkillers, but up-and-comers? They're going to be on antidepressants like Wellbutrin and Effexor — Prozac and Zoloft are old news — and stimulants. So it was some amusement that I read Provigil has become popular. More »
Skateboarding bulldogs key to website success
Sure, Dogster founder Ted Rheingold thinks that a "call to action" in a cross-promotion between the Web site and CBS's new show Greatest American Dog helped drive traffic. But I'm pretty sure it was all about the skateboarding bulldog. [Dogster]
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Gambling
Jason Calacanis takes first step -- admitting he has a problem
The road to recovery from gambling addiction is a long one, but the first priority is admitting to yourself that you have a problem, which Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis did in his first email missive since quitting the blogosphere: More »
Caption Contest
The number of good ideas I've had
The annual gathering of techies at Tim O'Reilly's Foo Camp in Sebastopol is like Bohemian Grove but slightly less secretive. Want to know who was in and who was out? Investor Joi Ito's photos should give you an idea of who's who this year. Have a better caption? The best one will become the new headline. Friday's winner: "Two guys, one glass" by montoya. (Photo by Joi Ito)
Nouveau Gauche
